Uncertainty Deferred
More than I thought. 28 sites with full-timers. We thought the number here would be about 10. Surprising.
Thankfully we now get to see people as we walk around the park. We continue to practice social distancing however we no longer experience social isolation. That makes a big difference.
Our time at the dealership, five weeks in total, was fine and we are so thankful for their generous hospitality. We were truly socially isolated during that time with limited social contact and that did begin to take a toll on my well-being.
We moved to our seasonal site on Friday without any issues. Our outdoor furniture survived the winter without any noticeable damage. For the time being we have a site with services in a beautiful outdoor setting in a quiet and peaceful place.
The cellular Internet here is high-speed. I get about 100 Mbps from the tower. Thank heavens for our international unthrottled high-speed unlimited cellular data plan. I use anywhere between 300 and 400 GB of data on a monthly basis and a reliable high-speed Internet is a necessity for our coach.
Uncertainty still lingers. Not just with us but for most of the full-timers here. The same question comes up in casual conversation: what will happen to us come fall? Will we be allowed to travel south?
I do not know.
The uncertainty of where we would live in Canada has been resolved. For now. Where will we be living come October?
I do not know.
This constant uncertainty from COVID-19 makes the RV lifestyle much less tenable for Canadian Snowbirds. The whole country, with the exception of a few places in British Columbia, is frozen for most of the year. Even in May. We are back into sub-zero temperatures overnight with daytime highs struggling to get past 8 Celsius or 46 Fahrenheit. Man is it cold in this country.
There is no way that we would choose to live in our coach during the winter months in Ontario. We even found it unpleasant during April.
I will be writing to the Canadian Snowbirds Association to see what, if anything, they might be doing to ensure our political leaders take into account the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Canadian Snowbirds that alternate their six months between Canada and the United States.
Trying to make alternate living arrangements at the last minute would be difficult and stressful. And I am not sure at what point in time we would have to make a call as to whether we stay in Canada this winter. June? July? August?
For now, I will try to not worry about what happens in another 5 months.
The time to worry about what happens next will come along soon enough.
Uncertainty deferred.
Hi Richard
It’s Rick & Cathy at C31. Could let us know where you get your internet service? We’re dying here trying to use the park’s service.
Thanks
Rick & Cathy
Hi Rick and Cathy,
I am on a U.S. based International commercial plan that is not available to retail customers and, from what I gather, is no longer available to commercial accounts. There are U.S. based resellers that will lease out similar contracts but they would be very expensive, likely in the $2,500 to 3,000 per year range. I also have a very high-end and complex network setup in our coach. The gear to achieve this level of performance in our coach includes a premium mobile cellular router, external antennas, switches and wireless access points. It also requires a solid understanding of networking technology to make it all work as the devices are enterprise level and not consumer level. It is decidedly not a plug and play environment 🙂
I was able to reliably achieve the 7 Mbps bandwidth at Cedarwood using this setup from Outside Our Bubble. It requires some technical expertise to get it going and you would need to be comfortable with setting up and pointing a directional antenna to one of the access points in Cedarwood. The components are closer to $400 CAD than the $100 USD that David claims in his video. And I did not use the 2.4 version… only the 5G version. The 2.4 spectrum here is very crowded and should be avoided.
I had a similar setup last year at Cedarwood on the 5G spectrum and I had zero issues with the park’s WiFi — we achieved a consistent and reliable 7 Mbps downloads throughout the season. Sufficient for basic streaming and web browsing. The only issue I had was that the park’s Access Points (AP) would consistently fail and I would have to notify park management, repoint the antenna to another AP until the original AP came back up.
We keep a couple of Public WiFi Internet on the go alternatives handy for those rare times when we do not have access to a cellular tower. For us, cellular data is the only robust means for consistent high-speed Internet. Because of my career in technology, I was able to source a commercial contract from the vendor and implement the complex system that we use in our coach. Unfortunately Canada does not offer a suitable cellular data plan for retail customers. Low earth orbit satellite Internet is close and might be relatively affordable in Canada. Starlink is suggesting mid-2020 for the service to begin in Canada although that may be ambitious. Certainly by next year this should open up as a viable alternative for mobile Internet. You can learn more about it here.
Hope some of that was helpful. Pleased to chat further if you have questions.
Richard